Pete Buttigieg endorses Joe Biden for president

March 2 (UPI) — Pete Buttigieg endorsed Joe Biden for president in a rally in Dallas on Monday night after suspending his 2020 campaign on Sunday.

Buttigieg — the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. — stood alongside the former vice president as he said throwing his support behind Biden would help to fulfill the goal of his campaign to rally the country together to defeat President Donald Trump.

“That was always a goal that was much bigger than me becoming president. And it is in the name of that very same goal that I am delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for president of the United States,” he said.

Buttigieg began the primary season with a narrow win in the Iowa caucus over Bernie Sanders, which he followed up with a second-place finish behind the Vermont senator in New Hampshire. But on Sunday he said that his campaign’s “path has narrowed to a close.”

Amy Klobuchar, a three-term Minnesota senator who sought to unite the Democratic Party behind a pragmatic centrism, also dropped out of the race on Monday and is expected to endorse Biden.

CNN, NBC News and ABC News cited campaign sources as saying Klobuchar would fly to Dallas to join Biden at a rally where she will suspend her campaign and offer him her endorsement one day before the crucial Super Tuesday primaries.

“Thanks to the hard work of our team, we built a campaign that believes in bringing people together and defied expectations every step of the way,” Klobuchar wrote on Twitter. “One thing is for certain: we will continue to build a coalition to win in November.”

She became the third Democratic presidential hopeful to drop out of the race in two days, following Buttigieg on Sunday and billionaire activist Tom Steyer earlier Monday.

The 59-year-old Klobuchar entered the race in February 2019 during a snowstorm in Minneapolis. Well-liked in her home state, where she has rolled to three consecutive lopsided Senate victories, she faced significant competition in the moderate lane from Biden and Buttigieg.

She pinned much of her hopes on neighboring Iowa, spending considerable time and resources in the state, where she was the only Democratic candidate to visit all 99 of its counties. Klobuchar, however, was disappointed with a fifth-place finish there.

She regained some momentum with a memorable performance in the Democratic debate before the New Hampshire primary, notching a third-place finish. But she could not translate that bump into a lasting trend, coming in sixth in both the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary.
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